Rawls’s duty of assistance and relative deprivation: Why less is more and more is even more
| Published date | 01 February 2020 |
| Author | Jan Niklas Rolf |
| Date | 01 February 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1755088218798657 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088218798657
Journal of International Political Theory
2020, Vol. 16(1) 25 –46
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1755088218798657
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Rawls’s duty of assistance and
relative deprivation: Why less
is more and more is even more
Jan Niklas Rolf
Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences, Germany
Abstract
John Rawls’s case for a duty of assistance is partially premised on the assumption that
liberal societies have an interest in assisting burdened societies to become well-ordered:
Not only are well-ordered peoples inherently peaceful, but negative spillover effects
would also disappear where peoples have a just or decent institutional order. Drawing
on relative deprivation theory, this article argues that the kind of limited assistance that
Rawls proposes to help burdened societies to become well-ordered would not reduce
but actually increase international terrorism and unwanted immigration by raising
unwarranted expectations and enhancing the resources that are needed to emigrate.
Thus, if Rawls is concerned about negative externalities, he should argue for either
more extensive assistance or no assistance at all.
Keywords
Duty of assistance, John Rawls, law of peoples, migration, relative deprivation theory,
terrorism
Introduction
Prompted mainly by John Rawls’s publication of The Law of Peoples, where he argues
for a duty of assistance but against more extensive monetary transfers at the international
level, cosmopolitan thinkers have engaged in a lively debate as to why Rawls’s domestic
scheme of distributive justice must extend internationally. For the most part, this has
been a normative debate, with proponents of international distributive justice paying lit-
tle or no attention to the question of whether states have an interest in establishing such
Corresponding author:
Jan Niklas Rolf, Faculty of Society and Economics, Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences, Marie Curie
Street 1, 47533 Kleve, Germany.
Email: niklas.rolf.2009@live.rhul.ac.uk
798657IPT0010.1177/1755088218798657Journal of International Political TheoryRolf
research-article2018
Article
26 Journal of International Political Theory 16(1)
a scheme. This is particularly true of ‘nonrelational’ cosmopolitans such as Charles Jones
(1999), Peter Singer (2004) and Brian Barry (2002), who believe principles of justice to
apply irrespective of the relation in which the actors stand. But even ‘relational’ cosmo-
politans such as the early Charles Beitz (1979), Thomas Pogge (1989) and Darrel
Moellendorf (2002), for whom principles of justice are reliant on empirical facts of inter-
national interdependence, tend to neglect the interests of states.1 It is only recently that
Pogge (1998, 2002), turning from purely philosophical questions to practical ethics, has
considered reasons for why self-interested states could adopt his proposed Global
Resources Dividend. What should be evident from this brief overview of the literature is
that the vast majority of arguments for international distributive justice are moral argu-
ments, confirming Beitz’s (1994) statement that ‘it is hard to think of anyone who has
defended institutional cosmopolitanism on other than cosmopolitan moral grounds’.
Taking the cue from Rawls, this article makes the case for more robust monetary
transfers at the international level. But unlike most of the aforementioned cosmopolitan
thinkers, it does so on prudential grounds. This is because Rawls’s case for a duty of
assistance is essentially twofold: While liberal societies are morally obligated to assist
burdened societies to become well-ordered, they also have an intrinsic interest to do so.
Similar to the democratic peace thesis, Rawls assumes that a society of well-ordered
peoples would be peaceful and stable. Seen in this way, we may think that the duty of
assistance, which stops once burdened societies have joined the ranks of well-ordered
peoples, contributes to international peace and stability. In this article, I will try to dem-
onstrate that the contrary is the case. Rather than being a source of greater security, the
duty of assistance is likely to generate perverse externalities that warrant a completely
different approach to international distributive justice.
After reviewing Rawls’s principles of justice and his duty of assistance, I argue that
Mexico and Saudi Arabia meet, or come close to meeting, Rawls’s criteria of a liberal
and hierarchical well-ordered people, respectively. I then use the concept of relative
deprivation to explain why it is not people in burdened societies that pose the greatest
threat to international security but those in well-ordered but relatively poor societies such
as Mexico and Saudi Arabia. I conclude by suggesting that there are not only good moral
but also good prudential reasons to assist societies beyond the point of where they
become well-ordered, thereby advancing a cosmopolitan realism that has been pioneered
by Patrick Hayden (2005), Richard Beardsworth (2011) and William Scheuerman (2011).
Rawls’s principles of justice
In his seminal book A Theory of Justice, Rawls (1973) uses the concept of the original
position to determine the principles of justice that apply to the basic institutions of soci-
ety. Unaware of their future position, Rawls believes that the parties to the original posi-
tion will choose a first principle that takes each person to have an equal right to the most
extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others and a second principle
that stresses fair equality of opportunity (the fair equality of opportunity principle) and
that inequalities of income and wealth are to be arranged that they are to the greatest
benefit of the least advantaged (the difference principle). Yet a concept of right is not
complete, says Rawls (1973: 108–109), unless it also considers principles of justice for
states. Rawls (1973: 378) believes the domestic and international realm to be similar
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